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From the heady heights of dazzling croquembouches to the brutal lows of #Bingate, The Great British Bake Off is one of those pieces of media that’s become synonymous with a good night in in front of the telly. It’s like a more grown-up version of the Saturday evening reality sensation from the noughties, but with the added bonus you’re able to pretend that your Victoria sponge is just as good as one of those in the big white tent (whereas it’s a little harder to pretend that your karaoke turn as Cher is on par with anything on the later stages of The X Factor).
We’ve seen a lot of beloved Bake Off contestants go on to do great things, from Kim-Joy’s foodie column in The Guardian to Nadiya Hussain’s domination of all things baking for the BBC – but one former Bake Off favourite is doing great things when it comes to making cooking accessible for everyone.
Ruby Tandoh came in as a runner-up in the series in 2013, and since then has released three stellar cookbooks that are focused on the relationship between the reader and the food they eat – instead of insta-ready bakes, she’s all about late-night snack cravings, exploring how we interact with food on the silver screen, and how to focus on flavour over perfection. But Ruby’s latest culinary releases are of particular interest to us over here are Succeed With Dyslexia – and that’s because they’re designed to make cooking something that everybody can enjoy.
Sometimes cooking and baking can get a little difficult when you’re neurodiverse. Not only are some recipes incredibly wordy (literally who cares about how pumpkins remind you of your aunt’s farm in New Hampshire, just tell me how many cups of sugar we need-) or difficult to follow when you struggle with your literacy, many of them are designed for people who can follow instructions easily, have a good short-term memory, and are able to read on the go whilst they’re beating eggs and measuring out marinara sauce. So traditional recipe formats both online and in print can be bad news if you’ve got something like ADHD, dyslexia or dyspraxia – but Breaking Eggs and Cook As You Are are designed to be different.
Breaking Eggs was released this March, and it pushes the boundaries on the accepted format of the cookbook – it’s audio-only, for one thing, and is dictated with appropriate pauses and breaks in the spoken instruction to allow home bakers to bake along with the audio without the stress of having to pause and restart the sound. As far as we’re aware, it’s the first cookbook of its kind, and offers neurodiverse people or people who simply struggle with the format of following a recipe another way into cooking and baking – and we’d love to see more texts released in this format. Instead of a PDF, imagine a software package that comes with audio instructions and gives you enough time to install when you need to install or restart when you need to restart; or assembly instructions that leave your hands and attention free to fumble around with spanners and screwdrivers?
Cook As You Are is a new cookbook that’s designed to make cooking easy for the time-poor: from busy students to working dads, long-haul commuters or those who work on the go, it’s full of tasty treats and weeknight staples. Ruby describes it on Twitter as containing ‘over 100 full length recipes, with adaptations for different needs, budgets, skill levels and (dis)abilities’ – but it doesn’t stop there. There’s also another copy of the book being released that goes even further on accessibility, and puts neurodiverse people and their needs front and centre.
The second, abridged version of Cook As You Are follows on in the same vein as Breaking Eggs, but instead of eschewing written instructions for audio ones, it’s all about doing what we can to make the reading experience as assessable as possible for those people who do like to use a traditional cookbook in the kitchen. It’s a shorter and simpler read, and it’s been created to make the cooking experience something that people can enjoy regardless of neurodiversities, disbilities and different skill sets.
According to Ruby’s social media, the book ‘could be suitable for some disabled or neurodiverse peple – especially if [they] struggle with reading or have a learning disability’. The version combines a simple version of the prose and “easy-read” formatting with colour pictures and diagrams to make the process as simple as possible to follow. There are step-by-step creation guides instead of traditional methods, and the book is even finished with a a spiral binding to it easy to read on the go as it can lie flat on a surface. It’s also notable for its focus on visual cues, with high-quality photographs of the ingredients, equipment and the actions that the reader will need to take.
Food is important for a lot of us – some of us find it relaxing or therapeutic, and food is at the centre of most of our homes. Kitchens bring people together, and what we create allows us a way of connecting with parts of our heritage and culture that might feel distant as they’re on the other side of the globe, or fading out in a modern world. And we love the idea that it’s possible to make the act of cooking something that everyone can enjoy, whether they’re a natural reader, find following instruction a little tricky, or struggle with their literacy or co-ordination skills.
You can download a copy of Cook As You Are: The Easy-Read Version right here!
